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Bring your app ideas to life with this $30 developer learning bundle
Save yourself $110 while learning crucial skills
They say knowledge is priceless. While that normally may be true, there is always an exception — and in this instance, StackSocial is that exception. The platform offers new software, web services, and products, often at discounted prices. We rave about some of their software and tech course bundles, especially when a good deal comes along that’ll benefit anyone.
Google's new Credential Manager brings us closer to a passwordless future
Sign in with just a couple taps
Password managers are a staple for surviving the modern Internet, but Google and Apple have been promoting a world in which users won’t need to memorize passwords or worry about hackers stealing all of your credentials. While the road to a passwordless future isn’t exactly finished, Google released a new tool that will make it easier for app developers to offer a simple sign-in experience in their apps, regardless of the type of credentials that are required for the account.
Google is making a change to Android Auto apps that should have been there in the first place
Google is unifying Auto and Automotive app development
Google is moving to unify app development for Android Auto and Android Automotive. It feels long overdue, as there's no good reason to have two different routes for creating apps for what is essentially the same form factor.
Flutter's popularity has been exploding recently, and it's not hard to see why. The cross-platform framework made huge strides with the release of v2.0 a couple months ago when it gained official support for every major OS available, received substantial tooling enhancements, and made inroads toward protecting against instability with the addition of sound null safety. Now Google is taking an opportunity at I/O 2021 to announce Flutter 2.2.
Android 11 will let devs block network access in parts of their apps for better security
This could help prevent accidental data leaks
With every big new OS version there are countless under-the-hood upgrades that will go unnoticed by regular users but could have a positive impact on their experience. Android 11 will be no different, and we've spotted one such small but potentially important new feature in Google's developer documentation for the upcoming release. Starting in Android 11, apps will be able to grant per-process network access.
Huawei's giving developers a big incentive to join its app store
Some developers can receive 100% of the revenue they generate on Huawei's AppGallery for a limited time
Ever since Huawei saw itself caught amid the US-China trade quarrel, it has been scrambling to find a replacement for Google's ecosystem of apps. While its HMS Core is already doing a decent job as an alternative to the Google Play Services, the same can't be said about the company's AppGallery. It's missing many vital apps owners outside of China expect to have on their Android phones. To help grow this store, the company wants to incentivize developers with preferential revenue sharing for 24 months after they join the platform.
Google is giving developers until the end of 2021 to adapt their apps to Android 11
Most apps should still work out of the box, no updates needed
When Google started testing Android 10, it quickly upset developers with far-reaching changes that would lead to broken apps once the OS would reach stable, such as Scoped Storage. That's probably one reason why the company decided to postpone the enforcement of the new file management API to Android 11, which it has just released in the form of a developer preview. To make the transition easier this time around, Google worked hard on prioritizing backward compatibility, so projects that don't target the new OS won't outright break once it's released.
After Google published a beta of Android Studio 3.5 during I/O this year, the product is now coming to developers as a stable release. However, this version doesn't bring any new features with it. Google halted regular development for eight months and focused on making the program faster and less resource-demanding, leading to a more usable IDE.
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If there's one thing sure to ruin your day, it's a crashing smartphone. Even worse if the bug proves so bad that your phone eventually insists you do a factory reset, losing data in the process. This is exactly the situation that has befallen a number of Nexus and Pixel owners in recent days, and it's all to do with an adaptive icon bug that was discovered by the developer of third-party Facebook wrapper called Swipe.
For the past few years, the primary way to build Android applications has been through Google's Android Studio. The first stable release arrived in 2014, with version 2.0 appearing last year. The third major update was announced at Google I/O 2017, and now it is finally ready for prime time.
Ever since Google acquired Firebase in 2014, it has grown to be a formidable platform for mobile and web app developers. Earlier this year, Google used its I/O 2017 app to feature some of the advantages provided by the Firebase Realtime Database and Cloud Functions for Firebase. Now Firebase is launching a new product called Cloud Firestore, a fully-managed NoSQL document database, and it boasts a pretty compelling set of features for developers.
Earlier in the month, Google released an official statement on a particularly virulent phishing email imitating Google Docs that was doing the rounds. That same day, coincidentally or not, an update to the Gmail Android app added a special warning page that pops up every time a link in one of the suspect emails is clicked. Now, Google is implementing further changes to help prevent future scams of this type.
Google's new Google Play Console, or the artist site previously known as the Google Play Developer Console, has been brought into the future. The console has been updated to feature an attractive new material design layout as well as the new name. It has been about a year since the last time we saw any major visual changes to the site, and it's good to see Google's keeping an eye out for their developers sense of aesthetics.
Maintaining an app has some similarities with keeping a website up and running. One day everything is fine. The next day, an update goes out that leaves thousands of people unable to do anything. Now they're ranting on Twitter, leaving poor reviews on Google Play, and giving you a massive dose of negativity and rage to encounter when you sit down at your computer.
Microsoft makes a lot of apps for multiple platforms. It also makes a lot of tools that are used by other developers to build apps for multiple platforms. It only makes sense then that the company would be interested in buying Xamarin, one of the leading platform providers for mobile app development.
Have you felt the draw to get into app development, but didn't really know how to get started? Google wants to make things a little easier with a brand new guidebook that's meant to get developers on the right path. The Secrets to App Success on Google Play is an 81-page eBook that outlines the process and best practices for developing and submitting your software to the Play Store, and hopefully make some money on it. You won't get anything in-depth about writing code or managing a software business, but there are some good tips and tricks.
Google I/O was pretty amazing this year, right? We got the deets on Material design, a preview version of Android L, the formal release of Android Wear, the first manifestations of Android TV and Android Auto, and plenty of other bits and pieces. However, all of that content and all of those developer sessions can take forever to absorb, and professional developers just don't have time for that. Now that all of the videos have been posted, I've combed through every last one to narrow the list down to just the sessions that absolutely can't be missed.
Google's recently launched Android Wear platform had a bit of a rough weekend when it ran into an unexpected snag regarding paid apps – it couldn't install them. It turns out that the behavior could be traced to a Play Store security feature that was responsible for encrypting paid apps to make them more difficult to pirate; but in doing so, it had also made it impossible to extract and install any micro-apps contained within the apk. Tuesday night, Google responded to developers with an apology and a set of steps to reconfigure development projects to circumvent the installation issue.